Emacs Key Bindings in Ubuntu 14.04

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 30 Mar 2014 01:32:02 GMT  <== Computers ==> 

I'm rather accustomed to having partial Emacs key bindings wherever I type text on my Mac. Strange that Ubuntu does that only in bash, by default (and, of course, Emacs itself). So I went googling for how to make it so, and found this at stackoverflow:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs"

Worked like a charm. The per-user settings appear to be stored in ~/.config/dconf/user, which is some sort of binary database. Sigh. Unix used to be almost all text files. So much easier for us poor humans to grok that way.

The other annoying thing in Ubuntu's new Unity interface is that the Alt key opens the HUD (search and program launcher). You can disable this in System Settings/Keyboard/Shortcuts/Key to Show the HUD. Click that line and press the <backspace> key, or pick another shortcut, if you feel a need to get there without the mouse. For details, look here.

Add comment Edit post Add post

Comments (4):

I agree. No reason not to have that in text

Submitted by Rick Hanson on Sun, 30 Mar 2014 02:10:02 GMT

I agree. No reason not to have that in text.

Edit comment

Not being a programmer

Submitted by MamaLiberty on Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:20:04 GMT

Not being a programmer or even any kind of "geek"- all that is greek to me, Bill. I just have to go on dealing with the updates the best I can. :) Thanks anyway.

Edit comment

Yes, MamaLiberty, the

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:22:02 GMT

Yes, MamaLiberty, the only people who will care about this post are those whose fingers know Emacs key bindings. That tends to be mostly we old programmers.

Edit comment

LOL! See, I'm such a

Submitted by MamaLiberty on Tue, 08 Apr 2014 12:21:04 GMT

LOL! See, I'm such a non-geek that I thought we were still talking about the Ubuntu update. :) I'll be quiet.

Edit comment